How to Discover Your Emotional Intelligence Being a Student

Arranging the Thoughts on The Verge of Major Changes

It’s that time of year when you will be graduating and thinking of where to go for college. The one thing that may be on your mind right is your IQ. You may be asking yourself, am I smart enough? Will I pass that entrance exam? Well did you know that your IQ may not be enough to get you through the sometimes confusing times ahead.

What Is Emotional Intelligence

Plato said that— “All learning has an emotional base.” With that in mind let us find out just want emotional intelligence entails.

The first thing that you may think is that it’s all about knowing yourself, but it isn’t. To have a high emotional Q, you must get to know what makes others tick also. We do not live in the world alone, and for us to be emotionally intelligent we must begin to recognize the people around us as important to our well-being.

For instance, you come in late to class, over and over again, you notice that this is something that irritates your professor but you ignore it and continue doing it. However, when you get a C grade, after you have turned in all of your work and never had an absence, you ask why? he shows you in his syllabus where it plainly states that lateness is a cause of decreased grading. Now granted, you may have not looked at the syllabus closely, but if you had paid attention to the non-verbal cues of your professor each time you came into the classroom late, and you paid attention to the fact that this is something that he did not like, and in response to this you didn’t do it again, that is what would be healthy emotional intelligence. So the first step is to perceive others precisely. In many cases, this might involve understanding nonverbal signals such as their body language and especially their facial cues.

Emotional Intelligence and your Coursework

Many of you will be going off to college far from home. This is a time of high charged emotions as it is, and you must practice emotional intelligence without the help of mom or dad’s immediate presence. Sure you could call home, but did you leave home to have to call back every time you needed to figure out how to handle a problem that arises while away at school? Use your emotional intelligence from the first time you get that syllabus. Read through it carefully, and step by step follow through on everything that is to be prioritized.

If you are a procrastinator this is the time to stop, or you will fall behind with your coursework, and that will cause emotional distress. Notice the words “you”, therein lies one of the problems of lacking in emotional intelligence “you”.

Begin to recognize the things that will likely keep you from being your utmost emotionally stable. We all want to be liked, and we all want friends, but the word “no” was put in the vocabulary for a reason, and sometimes when you need to study and your “friends” want to party you have to use that word. “But”, you may say, “we do need others in our lives.” So here is a suggestion how to handle this. If you and your college mates want to have a bit of fun, why not start a study circle, instead of a drinking one. There are breaks at school that afford you plenty of time to study.

This suggestion will not only help you to realize whether or not you are choosing the right types of friends but it will also increase your emotional intelligence, because you are considering what is best for them also. Step two involves, yet again, thinking of others. Although this time you are thinking for yourself too. We need to keep in mind at all times how our behaviors and actions affect those around us. Not only is this a sign of good emotional intelligence, it is also a sign of a good leader.

Emotional Intelligence and Tact

There are no right or wrong, or black and white answers to how emotions will influence our lives, however we want to make sure that they are not dictating out lives. Emotions are necessary to function in life, it is how we know what we are feeling and when to make sound decisions that will enhance our lives for the better. Knowing when a friend is upset about something, or at us, will go a long way in keeping that friend. Using sound emotional intelligence will make your comments to them tactful and compassionate. Selfishness should never play a part in emotional intelligence. With these tools you should have a beginning foundation on how to discover and increase your emotional stability.